Garrosh Down, Are We Heroic Now?

  <Egalitarian Misanthropes> has been working on Garrosh for a few weeks now. We were over 70 wipes before we got him Sunday night. Our first few wipes on Sunday were 1% or less, so we knew we just had to keep doing what we were doing and we would get it.

  I had actually gotten so used to wiping in the last phase that I wasn't expecting it when it happened. I was freshly dead (as usual, so many minions!), and since the battle res had already been used, I was looking at the healing meter to see what my Lay on Hands had healed for earlier. I have 1.04 million health, and it healed for 1.03 million. I was at less than 1% health when I used it. Pallys are OP.

  This isn't the end for us, by far. We've kept up with progression enough that we all seem to have enough time/energy/motivation to do heroic bosses. I had stepped into the middle of progression in ToT, so I was just happy to finish that tier ahead of the curve, and not overly disappointed that we only did one heroic boss. Now we're still carrying momentum, and I expect heroics to be the perfect antidote to end of expansion boredom.

  It's possible we could get Cutting Edge for Garrosh, depending on how fast WoD hits. We got Immerseus September 13th, and Garrosh on December 22nd, 14 weeks of raiding. If heroics takes the same amount of time, we could get it by the end of March.


  There's just one fact to face and one question to ask first:

  The fact is, we don't need the gear. There is no new raid in this content that the gear we would get would help us with, and if we want the looks for transmog, we can always come back to it. Doing heroics now would just be for the sake of it.

  The question is "Are we heroic raiders?" Looking back over this group's record, I think the answer is clearly "No." I think we can be, but that depends on whether we can all commit to it, myself included. I've got the time, but do I have the skill? Others have the skill, but do they have the time?

Random Ramblings: WoW Notes, Tragedy, Embracing the Ugly

WoW Notes:

  I keep a wordpad document with notes on it, so I thought I'd post it:

/run for k, v in pairs({ Galleon = 32098, Sha = 32099, Oondasta = 32519, Celestials = 33117, Ordo = 33118, Nalak = 32518}) do print(format("%s: %s", k, IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(v) and "\124cff00ff00Yes\124r" or "\124cffff0000No\124r")) end

  This is a macro that shows me what world bosses I've killed that week. Sure, there are addons that track this, but I like to use simple solutions where available.

Kallahan gear:

Rolls:
Malkorok - prot, trinket
Blackfuse - ret, shoulders, ring
Garrosh - ret, pants
Ordos - ret, warforged anything!

My three rolls a week go to these bosses. If we down Garrosh, I'll roll on him, if not, I put that one on Ordos.

My loot list is per boss, with each piece that could drop per spec. In italics are pieces that are not upgrades, plain text for Ret and non-BIS Prot upgrades, and bold for BIS Prot pieces. I also note in brackets if LFR or Flex has an upgrade.

immerseus prot - dodge/parry 1h, parry/dodge shoulder, dodge/parry wrist, hit/parry feet
ret - haste/crit chest, hit/haste wrist, mastery/haste hands
protectors prot - exp/parry back, dodge/parry hands, stam/aoe trinket
ret - mastery/haste shoulder, hit/haste waist, hit/crit ring
norushen prot - hit/mastery 1h, parry/dodge headret - mastery/haste back, mastery/crit wrist, cleave/strength trinket
sha prot - tier chest, dodge/parry shield, hit/dodge neck
ret - tier chest, crit/haste 2h, hit/crit feet

galakras prot - hit/mastery shoulder, hit/dodge wrist, parry/dodge ringret - haste/mastery head, hit/mastery shoulder, cooldown/strength trinket
juggernaut prot - hit/mastery neck, dodge/parry chest, dodge/healing trinket
ret - hit/mastery neck, exp/crit wrist, crit/haste hands, haste/mastery waist
dark shaman prot - exp/parry 1h, hit/mastery waist, hit/mastery ring, hit/dodge ring
ret - crit/mastery, hit/mastery waist, crit/haste feet, hit/mastery ring 
nazgrim prot - tier hands, exp mastery shield
ret - tier hands 
malkorok prot - exp/parry wrist, exp/mastery feet, stam/cooldown trinket(any) - roll
ret - crit/mastery neck, crit/mastery legs, exp/mastery feet
spoils prot - parry/mastery shield, mastery/parry waist, exp/dodge feet
ret - crit/haste head, crit/haste ring
thok prot - tier helm, mastery/parry chest, exp/mastery ring(any)
ret - tier helm, mastery/haste 2h, exp/mastery ring, boost/strength trinket 
blackfuse prot - tier shoulders, haste/mastery 1h, exp/parry neck, mastery/parry hands 
ret - tier shoulders, exp/haste ring(any) - roll
paragons prot - tier legs, exp/crit 1h
ret - tier legs, strength/crit trinket
garrosh prot - exp/parry head, stam/crit trinket
ret - crit/mastery 2h, crit/mastery shoulders x2, haste/mastery legs - roll

A rather pesky 530 Band of the Scaled Tyrant has yet to be upgraded, and Malkorok refuses to cough up my hands-down, over-powered, best-in-slot trinket, Vial of Living Corruption. Seriously, I'd be happy with the LFR version. Other than that, I only have two pieces of Flex piece left, my boots and tier shoulders, and I'll be in all normal-mode or above. My group is working on the last phase of Garrosh, and I'm certain that gear is not an issue. I feel ready for heroics as it is.

I also have a similar gear list for my Monk Kallil, though it is not updated as I haven't played him much lately. I've been leveling a Warlock! More on her later...

Next in my notes I have a Guild/Player blacklist. It's fortunately short, and it lists who I don't want to ever have anything to do with again, a note on why, and a list of their alts. I won't be airing this laundry out.

Next I have my Alt's professions planned. It's out of date, but I'll reassess it soon. I've been busy.

Finally, a couple macros I used to use when I was tanking on my DK. Balancing Dodge and Parry was important too me, after maximizing Mastery, of course, so I kept these handy:

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end p=235.5*d/65.631440-((235.5/65.631440)*5.01-n) DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry for current dodge: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

with swordshattering
/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end p=235.5*d/65.631440-((235.5/65.631440)*5.01-n)+4 DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry for current dodge: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

Tragedy

  (A little bit in character here, sort of. I don't RP, but I like the lore, and I like a bit of background for my characters.)

  I had a moment while raiding in SoO that I would define as a tragedy in the classical sense. The best explanation of tragedy I've found is in a video by Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs when he gave a TED Talk. That's the sense of the word that I'm using here. Seriously, go watch the video, it's only 20 minutes.

  So that moment for me was going into the Cleft of Shadows. I've always considered Warlocks to be bad guys that happened to be on Team Good. Yeah, they're bad for consorting with demons, but I'm glad they're at least on our side.

  But then I see "Heretics will burn!" posted and Warlocks strung up and burning with shadowflame. Then one shouts "I will not burn like the rest! Face the demons you fear!" Of course I'm sickened by Garrosh's actions. These Warlocks did not deserve to be murdered and mutilated this way.

  But I wonder if I myself have been so wrong about Warlocks all along, for all these years. I also wonder if I'm so afraid of the demonic that I shun anyone who has anything to do with them, unless they're one of the "good ones". I wonder if I have the courage to face the Burning Legion when the time comes, and the time will come. I wonder if I will be able to understand that enemy.

Embracing the Ugly

  So I rolled a Warlock, a female Troll one even. I've previously tried rolling a female Troll a few times before, but the faces are just... ugly. There's that one "dazed and confused" face that people find less... ugly, but I think that's doing it rong! A troll is just not going to be pretty! Embrace the ugly!

  What I plan to do with this Warlock is even uglier...

  I'm going to do the quest for green fire. I'm going to farm Kara for Gorehowl. I'm going to spec Demo and use Glyph of Felguard.

  I highly suspect Garrosh will be brought back as a raid boss in Warlords. He's too great of a baddie to not! Whenever he comes back, I'm going to burn him with green fire as my felguard hits him with Gorehowl. Should have maintained your weapon, dumbass!

P.S. I'm going to finish Alt appreciation.